The best way to prepare for a night out with a Shakespearean tragedy is to do a bit of reading up in the afternoon, eat a light supper - perhaps Welsh rarebit - and then arrive early to do some stretching exercises in the foyer before curtain-up.

It's worth turning up to an awards gig if you know you've won one but, since you never do know, it's not worth it.

Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.

My eyebrows could do with a trim.

Comedy ages quicker than tragedy, to the extent that we can't know if the 10 commandments may originally have been 10 hilarious one-liners.

It was Julie Burchill who decreed that, beyond a certain age, a man should not be seen in a leather jacket.

I read 'Crime and Punishment' years ago and don't recall the details of it, but I do retain a strong sense of the creeping paranoia and panic.